Category: Work

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Gratitudes 2018, Day 41

After several long months of working with Assessment Delivery (ADel, for short), today marked my first day back with Publishing (Pubs, for short). And for that, I am very grateful… I don’t think there’s a short version for that.

That’s not to say that working with ADel was all trials and tribulations. I kinda liked it there because it was a wide-open room and I was sitting across a table from some other contractors from Pubs instead of staring at the wall. No more random conversations about random stuff at random times, so I’ll miss the laid-back atmosphere and camaraderie with the ADel folks. That said…

  1. Being back in Pubs. I liked (most of) the work I was doing there in the winter and spring and I’m glad to be doing that again.

  2. New computer monitors. When four of us moved over to ADel for the summer, we brought all of our equipment with us: laptops, extra monitors, keyboards, etc. There were a few people who worked in Pubs for a while during that time and those people got their own equipment as well. When they left, it all stayed behind. “This intern had some pretty nice monitors… mine now!”

  3. An empty workspace next to mine. We brought all of our equipment back, there was some left behind by other people… if I remember right, the workspace next to me is currently housing six flat-screen monitors, three keyboards, two laptop docking stations, a few computer mice, plenty of random cords… I wouldn’t call it a computer graveyard. More like a scrap heap.

  4. Desk drawers. I still have Baby Groot on my desk to hold a bunch of pens, but I can throw papers into a drawer instead of awkwardly keeping them tucked partway under my keyboard.

  5. The Balloon of Happiness. During our time in ADel, we had a balloon. All of us Pubs people drew different facial features on it and it became the Balloon of Happiness. Later in the summer, we came into possession of ten more balloons. (Don’t ask me how unless you want to end up being an accomplice…) Many of those balloons ended up with facial features as well: one was scowling, one had an ecstatic grin, there were two cats and a dog and now they’re all in my workspace tucked behind one of my new monitors. Except for the original. I brought that back to ADel. (Given all of the projects that keep getting dropped in their laps, I figured they could use it.)

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Gratitudes 2018, Day 23

I was really dragging today at work and even started doing the tired head bob in the middle of the afternoon. Yeah, it was pretty bad. (Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as a production editor who got hired at the beginning of the summer and released three weeks later: he fell asleep at his desk on his third day. Yeah, that’s even worse. One of my coworkers likes to refer to him as “Sleepy McSleeperson”.) But even when I’m really tired, there are still things to be grateful for.

  1. Having two break rooms at work. There’s one right across the hall in the part of the building where I’m working, but when I’m nodding off, taking a walk to the one further away is a good way to help me wake up.
  2. Old prescription bottles. After so many years of picking up meds at the pharmacy, I’ve had a variety of different sizes. If I want to recycle the plastic, I can peel off my prescription information and toss them. Alternatively, I can use them to hold other stuff: vitamins… fish oil tablets… coins… that’s right, one style is almost the perfect size for carrying quarters, so I filled one with a bunch of spare change to use in vending machines in the break room.
  3. Vending machines. Sometimes, you’re hungry and need a snack. Sometimes, you need an excuse to go for a walk that doesn’t involve all of the stalls being occupied in the restroom.
  4. Multiple restrooms in the building. Because sometimes “Just wait until one of these is available” isn’t a viable option.
  5. Walking. Because sometimes “Just put on some roller skates and skate to the break room/restroom” isn’t a viable option. Most times. Probably all the time. The employee handbook doesn’t mention it specifically, but I’m guessing no roller skating in the halls is an unwritten rule.
  6. Legs. Because sometimes “Just walk/roller skate with your hands” isn’t a viable option.

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Never too old for ice cream

One of the things I like about where I work is that they celebrate holidays. I’m not talking about Thanksgiving or Christmas or Patriot Day. No, I’m talking about the yummy ones.

On National Pizza Day, they ordered a couple dozen pizzas for the staff to share. National Donut Day? Boxes of donuts. Pi Day? I celebrated with a big slice of key lime pie.

It turns out that Sunday is National Ice Cream Day. Most of us are smart enough (or at least not masochistic enough) not to come in to work on the weekends, so on Friday, you could hear that jingling tune of an ice cream truck coming from the parking lot.

Its siren song was too powerful to resist and I was dragged out of the building almost against my will. Almost. Not really. Look, it was ice cream! I wanted some!

I got in line and saw the pictures of what was available on the side of the truck, so by the time I got to the front of the line, I knew what I wanted from the ice cream lady: a birthday party ice cream sandwich.

The “bread” was vanilla instead of chocolate and there were bright specks of color in the ice cream. Mmmmm… yummy.

I brought my treasure back into the break room and started opening the wrapper, then someone saw me and asked, “What did you get?”

“A birthday party ice cream sandwich.”

The guy she was talking to started saying, “So it’s probably going to taste like corn syrup and—”

“It’s gonna taste like a party, mother fucker!”

Okay, I kinda trailed off during that last word so I didn’t outright swear at a guy I’d never met before, but I wanted to make a point. And that point was… I was going to eat my ice cream! And enjoy it! Because it’s ice cream, mother fucker! Mmmmm… yummy.

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Twin Cities Scout Shops on Facebook

About a month ago, the territory manager for the Scout shops was having a phone conference with the store managers and revealed that she wanted a Facebook page. There are a couple locations around the Twin Cities area, so instead of separate pages for “Burnsville Scout Shop” (where I work), “St. Paul Scout Shop”, etc., we should have an all-encompassing one.

Enter me, our local social media guru. It’s totally not true, but I helped someone else make a “Dear Wayward Student” Facebook page a while back, so I had some idea of what I was doing. I also had some fun making the first page, finding images to use for the profile pic and cover photo and what not, so why not volunteer my services?

I did a little research the next night, sent Sally (my manager) an email about what I found, which she passed along to Marlene, the territory manager. When I got the green light, it was time to go to work.

The biggest decision I had to make was the web address. “Twincitiesscoutshops” takes a long time to type and it just looks awkward, so I decided to use https://www.facebook.com/tcscoutshops instead. That still makes sense for “Twin Cities Scout Shops”, right? (If it doesn’t, it’s kind of a moot point since the page has been online for a couple weeks now.)

I gathered some pictures to use, wrote the description (I thought up the short one; the long version is mostly just hours and addresses for each location)… I did everything but activate the page because I wanted Marlene to do it. She’s ultimately responsible for what we do, so it was her last chance to pull the plug. A couple hours later, we were live.

And that’s where things have become a little more frustrating. Like I said, I’m our territory’s “social media guru”. (My nose grows a little longer every time I type that…) I want the page to do well. It’s my baby. My plan was to make Marlene and all of the store managers administrators of the page. They’d be able to post as “Twin Cities Scout Shops” versus their personal accounts and they could provide content from each of their stores. For example, the first non-profile, non-cover photo on the page is a selfie of the Burnsville Scout Shop staff and I thought we could get three more pictures just like that one.

The only requirement? Being friends with me on Facebook. That’s why Sally and Marlene became my Facebook friends. I can’t make someone an admin of the page if we’re not connected. Simple, right? Right?!

Apparently not. Well, either it’s not that simple or the other store managers don’t give a shit about the page because I haven’t received friend requests from any of them yet. I’ve tried to contact them on Facebook, but nothing. At the time I’m writing this, Sally, Marlene and I are the only ones who have administrative access to the page.

Jump ahead a few weeks to another phone conference. Marlene wanted each store manager to come up with an idea of how to increase sales for April and someone piped up that we should utilize the Facebook page. Not Sally; someone else. Did I mention that Sally, Marlene and I are the only ones who have administrative access to the page? We’re the only ones who can use the page. At all. And someone else had the balls to suggest using it more effectively.

Aside from that affront, though, that’s what Sally and I have been doing. A majority of it has been my own work—comes with the territory of being a social media guru (I better not write that too many more times or my glasses might slide off my face)—but Sally has been providing me with content. Without the pictures and emails she sends, I wouldn’t have much to post, so I don’t want to discount her help.

That’s what I’ve been working on the last couple weeks during while there haven’t been customers in the shop: “Like us on Facebook!” I made a sheet to put next to the register with a QR code that links to the Facebook page, a couple smaller flyers we can use when setting up a trading post off-site… I’m having fun doing research, posting useful/relevant/amusing content, it keeps me productive… I’m enjoying it.

Meanwhile, the page likes have slowly been creeping upward. I think it’s at 60 now, which means more people know about it, but there’s a distinct possibility that not all of the other store managers are among that number. Which also means there’s a distinct possibility that the person who said “utilize the Facebook page” has not engaged with it at all. Yeah, I probably sound a little bitter, but it’s my baby.

Maybe it’s because I’m not an actual parent, but I haven’t shown off any “baby pictures” to all of my Facebook friends yet. Hell, I don’t think I’ve advertised it at all, which probably makes me a bit of a hypocrite. People have to know the Facebook page exists if I want them to click the “Like” button. Thusly and therefore, here’s that link to the Twin Cities Scout Shops page again. Like and Share and come visit the shops in person! Who knows, maybe you’ll see me sitting in front of the computer working on yet another flyer.